Union Special Mach. Co. v. Singer Mfg. Co.

227 F. 858, 142 C.C.A. 382, 1915 U.S. App. LEXIS 2364
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedSeptember 2, 1915
DocketNo. 1861
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 227 F. 858 (Union Special Mach. Co. v. Singer Mfg. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Union Special Mach. Co. v. Singer Mfg. Co., 227 F. 858, 142 C.C.A. 382, 1915 U.S. App. LEXIS 2364 (3d Cir. 1915).

Opinion

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge.

In the court below the Union Special Machine Company, owner of patent 890,582, granted June 9, 1908, to R. G. Woodward, for a sewing machine, filed a bill against the Singer Manufacturing Company, charging it with infringement. On final hearing that court, in an opinion reported at 215 Fed. 598, held such infringement had not been shown. From a decree dismissing the bill plaintiff took this appeal. The art in question involves high-speed power sewing machines. It is exceedingly complicated, and this fact, together with the further one that we are constrained to differ from the conclusion reached in the very full opinion of the learned judge who decided the case below, must be the warrant for the length of this opinion.

The sewing machines made by both parties are used in the shoe making, both for fancy stitch or ornamental sewing, and also for the seams of a shoe together. As an example of the extent to which the sewing machine Was used for ornamental shoe sewing and leather stitching, the machine of Hart & Hills may be cited as the best known in the art. This arises from the fact that it was patented as far back as 1888, was marketed by such great as the Wheeler & Wilson, and subsequently by the Singer which absorbed that company. This Hart & Hills machine not only represents the highest mechanical efficiency in the art of stitching, but it also is the nearest alleged approach the art had developed to the machine here in controversy. Its working and in the field of ornamental stitching may he best pointed out from the specification, aided by the accompanying drawing, which Figure 6 of Hart Sr Hills patent No. 406,277.

It will be noted that this machine first sews a straight line of stitches, and then turns into sewing a number of such stitches in zigzag form. In that regard the patent says:

"The object of our invention is to provide novel means for operathig the vibrating frame, stopping and starting its vibrations at will, and making a straight line of stitches, or a zigzagged line of stitches, or alternating stral~ht and zigzagged hues of stitches, as may be desired."

It will be noted each leg of the triangle is made up of a number of stitches, and as the number of such stitches in each leg of the V had to be uniform the machine was so constructed that the mechanism to change the direction of the stitch only became effective when the required number of stitches had been made in such leg. Moreover, the machine was also used at moderate speed; the patent stating:

"By this arrangement it will be seen that a comparatively slow internut~ tent reeipToeatmg motion is imparted to the needle crosswise to the line of feed wluil~ the needle is ahove the work, s& as to produce the zigzag line of stitches show~t at X in F'igure 0."

This niachine, with its capacity for straight and zigzag ornamental pattern work, was widely known and used in the art; but no one, during the 17 years following the grant of the patent, seemed to have either used it, or indeed to have conceived of its use, in the seam-sewing [860]*860branch of the art. In that branch of shoe manufacture it had long been customary to unite the two parts of the shoe upper at the back, and thus form the heel by superimposing the two pieces of leather, with their edges flush, and sew them together with an ordinary straightaway seam a short distance back fro.m the edge. When the united pieces were spread out as shown in the accompanying sketch a ridge was formed which, while not objectionable near the top, was highly objectionable when pressing against a wearer’s heel. The practice, therefore, was to subject the ridge to heavy pressure, which involved rehandling and expense, and did not wholly do away with the ridge. About 1898 an employé of a shoe factory at the North Star Shoe Company in Minneapolis began the practice of making a seam by the successive use of two machines well known in the art. He first sewed the upper part of the heel seam .on a regular straight-away machine, and then transferred the upper to a regular overedge machine, which made a hinge-shaped joint. The result is shown in the accompanying sketch, in which, when the two pieces are spread out, it will be seen the curved overedged part opens out on a hinge and leaves no seam, as shown, for instance, in the accompanying sketch, on a flat surface.

In this North Star practice the ridge was thus confined to the upper part, where it was unobjectionable. This practice, a decided advance over the old art, though open to several objections, was followed for several years. Thus it required, as against the practice of the old [861]*861art, two machines instead of one; it required' three distinct manipulations as against the one straight-away seam of the old art, viz. sewing the straight-away part seam on one machine, transfer to the second machine, and sewing the overedge part seam on the latter machine. .Instead of the work being done continuously by one operator on one machine, it was done noncontinuously by one operator on two machines, or by two operators if done in unbroken sequence. The two stitchings also had to overlap each other to prevent raveling, and this made a bunch and left loose thread. It is obvious, of course, that in this practice much of the potential output of high-speed machines was also lost. The practice, unsatisfactory as it was, challenged attention, and Woodward, the present patentee, in 1902 conceived the idea of a continuous straight-away overedge seam, a seam which was so novel in the art as led the Patent Office to grant him a patent for the seam for sewed articles in patent No. 786,934, of April 11, 1905, as a new article of manufacture, shown in the accompanying drawing:

At this point the inquiry naturally arises: How could the Patent Office, having already before it the stitch shown in 1-lart & 1-lills' Figure 6 above shown, and a machine capable of doing both straight-away and stitching, grant a patent to Woodward for the form of seam he claimed to have originated? But the answer is quite obvious. The form of stitch which Hart & Hills' machine made was not the overedge, hinged stitch which eliminated the objectionable ridge. Woodward's seam had but two stitches in each leg of the zigzag of his seam, one near the edge and one clear over the edge, which made a hinged ridgeless joint, while the Hart & Hills machine had a plurality of stitches in each leg of the zigzag, which, if used to join two superimposed edges, would have left the stiff upright ridge shown in one of the foregoing drawings.

It is therefore manifest that, in the estimate of the Patent Office, the difference between the two scams was such that it involved patentable novelty to change from the. one to the other. And if it was right in so holding, it would equally seem clear that it would also require inventive novelty to so remake the Hart & Hills straight-away machine as to enable it to make this novel straight-away, overedge, continuous seam. And such the outcome proved to be, for whereas Woodward, the experienced designer of the plaintiff, and Gray, the experienced designer of the defendant, in the succeeding years sought [862]*862to devise a high-speed machine that should make such a seam, neither of them used the Hart & Hills machine as their base. And why they did not is quite apparent, when the problem confronting them is fully comprehended.

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Bluebook (online)
227 F. 858, 142 C.C.A. 382, 1915 U.S. App. LEXIS 2364, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/union-special-mach-co-v-singer-mfg-co-ca3-1915.